The Reformation is here

These are dark and bewildering days for Britain’s community of Good People, the ones who – insulated from material discomfort through large incomes and in many cases large inheritances – believe that everything can be accomplished simply by being kind and, further, by wearing one’s kindness as a badge which on the surface proclaims gentility and compassion but which, not very far below, is a polite voice insisting: ‘I am considerably richer than you, which is why I have these beliefs.’

These are the people who could not possibly vote Reform UK because it would be akin to having an avocado bathroom suite, or net curtains, or a bright-yellow Nissan Juke. They will tell you that their aversion to Reform is an expression of principle and decency, but it is actually a terror that the established order of things might be upturned if Nigel Farage and co ever got into power. Reform does not simply challenge the ‘major’ parties in the usual way of offering a subtle difference of emphasis – a few quid here on tax, a few quid less here on investment, women sometimes have cocks and sometimes do not. It instead offers an entirely different society, where the lazy and discredited tenets of the past 40 years are swiftly abolished in a kind of Doge-like frenzy, to massed cheering from those who always – deep down, at least – considered them otiose and downright harmful – harmful to the rapidly sinking country, harmful to the hard-up individual. For those of us who welcomed last week’s astonishing local election results, it was the start of what we might call a Reformation. Long overdue, too.